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Notes from the Home - October 22, 2013

It’s Monday
again, and I am sure today will not top last Monday, which dawned breezy, cool
and overcast. And it stayed that way. But it didn’t rain, and shortly after
lunch I ventured out. One lap into my travels around Covenant Woods, I pulled
up under some trees and called Beth. Much to my surprise and delight, she was
home and had time to chat with the old man. Or perhaps she was taking advantage
of an opportunity to procrastinate. Her project for the day, after all, was “I
need to get this house clean.”

She talked excitedly about Hayden, who was
off visiting Grandma. The young man would be eager to help clean house, and
Beth worried that she might not be able to keep up with him. A week or two ago,
Hayden, in his rush to get from here to there, had fallen and split his lip.
But he’s recovered and is again full of life and bubbling over with curiosity.

MaKenna, who does not yet get underfoot, was
home with Beth. Looks can be deceiving. “She’s a chunk,” Beth had often said of
MaKenna. And from the pictures Beth has posted on Facebook and the videos she
has sent along, I had to agree. MaKenna has a pudgy round face and appears to
have the build of someone who will be able take care of herself should the need
arise. A recent trip to the doctor for a check-up revealed, however, that
MaKenna is merely average in size and weight. In all other things – especially
things such as cuteness, intelligence and beauty of her smile – she is miles
above the norm. So says Dr. Grandpa.

Beth then talked about her latest dream. She
wants to get into the canning business. It’s fall, and she’s been busy canning
and making jams and jellies. Why not try and sell some of the bounty? Her mind
is busy with thoughts of going to farmers’ markets, finding a merchant who will
take her handiwork on consignment and taking orders via the Internet. If anyone
can pull it off, Beth can.

The half hour on the phone lifted my
spirits, and it wasn’t long before they got another lift. Moments after I got
back to the apartment, Debbie called and asked if I wanted to Skype with
Hayden. My favorite grandson has graduated from sitting in the high chair to
sitting at the table. The highlight of the twenty-minute Skype was being called
“Grandpa.”

I woke up early Saturday morning, really
early, just after midnight early. I had gone to bed at quarter after nine, read
for a few minutes, fell into a sound sleep and woke up a couple of hours later.
After trying for an hour to get back to sleep, I got out of bed. It was the
third straight morning I’d been up and about in the wee hours, and the first I
couldn’t blame on the Boston Red Sox. Richie, my next-door neighbor, brought in
Thursday and Friday by yelling “Here we go Red Sox!!! Here we go!!!”
“Steelers,” I wanted to shout through the wall. “The name of the team in that
cheer is ‘Steelers.’ Get it right.”But
the Red Sox got it right Saturday night, which I found out when Richie yelled,
“Way to go Boston!! Here we go Red Sox!!! Here we go!!”

There is no guarantee I won’t be a creature
of the night Wednesday when the Red Sox and Cardinals play Game 1, but if I am
up Richie won’t be the cause. He’s going to be out of town for a few days.

The home’s formal name is Covenant Woods
Retirement Community. There are times, however, when the place is more like a
motel for transients. A month ago there were three men named Marvin among
Covenant Woods’ two hundred residents. By the end of this month, there will be
just one Marvin here.

Gray and Margaret, who live in one of the
duplexes, are going to move back to South Carolina in a week or two. They’ve
been here a little over a year – Gray, Jr. lives in Columbus. Their home in
South Carolina is just as they left it.

“We weren’t sure what we wanted to do with
our house, so we didn’t do anything with it,” Margaret said. “We gathered odds
and ends to furnish our place here.”

They are going back because Gray, who
suffers from dementia, wants to go back, and the family feels he’d be more
comfortable in a familiar place.

Jean is moving to another retirement
community in the Columbus area. At times Jean can be a tiresome old gossip.
Most of the time, though, her acid tongue and biting wit are great fun. I
wonder what she says about me. No I don’t. I’m better off not knowing.

There was mail in the mailbox yesterday, a
letter telling me that as the owner of a Hyundai I can save up to $427.96 on
automobile insurance if I switch to Liberty Mutual. Now $428 is $428, but I do
not now, nor have I ever, owned a Hyundai. I don’t even own a car. I gave Russ
the Aveo when I got down here.

Had the letter been addressed to “Resident”
or “Postal Patron,” I could have dismissed it as just another example of
private industry being every bit as wasteful as the government. But this letter
was addressed to me, the salutation read “Dear Thomas Harris.” Even more
disconcerting was the second letter in the envelope – also bearing the
salutation “Dear Thomas Harris” – from Adam Davidson, Manager, Hyundai Motor
Finance and part-time shill for Liberty Mutual, urging me to take advantage of
the offer.

With that, I set off for an afternoon in
computerized-telephone-system hell, two of the most frustrating hours of my
entire frustrating existence. I was able to speak to one homo sapien, a female
employed by Liberty Mutual, who said “May I help you?” and “Oh, we get that
information from Hyundai.” Hyundai apparently has a company policy that
prohibits its employees from speaking on the telephone; a policy enforced a
phalanx of computers. Desperate for the sound of a human voice, I asked a few
people here if they knew anyone who worked for the local Hyundai dealership,
someone who might know the top-secret phone number to people in Hyundai Motor Finance.
No luck there, and all the numbers I found on the Internet took me through an
endless computerized labyrinth of pressing this number or that number in order
to get to another computer offering me other options that took me to other
computers with other menus.

This just occurred to me: Is there a link
between computerized phone systems and gun violence? And is there a link
between cell phone use and gun violence? Now, hear me out. In the old days,
when company phones were answered by incompetent fools, a caller could vent his
frustration by suggesting the callee perform a certain physically impossible
act of a sexual nature. The 21st Century caller can say the same thing to the
computer, but it is not the same, not even close. In the pre-cell phone days,
the disgruntled caller could also slam the telephone’s receiver down into its
cradle. You can slam your cell phone against the table, but then you have to
clean the resulting mess and go buy another phone. Instead of relieving
frustration, taking out your frustrations with the modern phone only creates
more frustrations.

But I digress. Unable to find a person at
Hyundai, I turned to the Internet and did an on-line credit check. It was
reassuring to discover that if I have a doppelganger out there, he didn’t take
out a loan for his Hyundai in my name.

That’s it for now. I’m going to go soak my
fingers in acid before I write a letter to Mr. Adam Davidson and ask him where
he got my name, why he’s handing it out willy-nilly, and then suggest he go
perform a physically impossible act of a sexual nature.

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